The Village of Mineola Board of Trustees voted last Wednesday to adopt a resolution that protects the identities of first responders and other emergency personnel who may also respond to a crime scene.
The local law – the first of its kind on Long Island – piggybacks on the discovery reform efforts made by state lawmakers, which only protect the identities of police officers responding to a crime and their families from threats or retaliation.
“I don’t think that goes far enough,” said Mineola Mayor Scott Strauss, a former NYPD officer and firefighter, during a work session on Feb. 19. “We want to protect all of our first responders to the extent that we can. Just like our police officers, our first responders may also be present at crime scenes and like our police officers they too have privacy rights and families they need to protect.”
The state’s automatic discovery laws, which were adopted as part of the state budget, look to speed up the process of providing information related to a prosecution.
Strauss said part of the laws require that prosecutors disclose all of the names, addresses, and contact information of anyone present at a crime scene except for law enforcement officials.
“To that point, I’ve asked our village attorney to draft a resolution providing our first responders the same protection afforded our law enforcement personnel,” Strauss said. “I’m not sure this will hold up but at the end of the day, we need to make sure we have done everything we can to protect our first responders and this is worth fighting.”
Efforts to reach the state department of homeland security and emergency services, the state defenders association, and the state bar association were unavailing.
